WHEN Labour’s policy chief moaned recently about a “dead hand at the centre” of his party – blocking bold ideas – did he have the railways in mind?

I suspect Jon Cruddas just might have, when I look at the timid policy on offer at a crunch meeting this weekend – which falls so far short of the courage Ed Miliband claims to have in spades.

At Labour’s National Policy Forum, activists will be asked to back allowing a state firm to bid against private companies to run rail franchises, when they come up for renewal.

The plan – with the fingerprints of Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls – is billed as a pragmatic compromise that can help drive down rail costs and provide a better deal for the taxpayer, without bringing back British Rail.

But, in reality, it is designed to prevent any roll back of the 20-year privatised system that has given us the highest rail fares in Europe – and is a victory for that “dead hand”.

And that is why it seems likely to trigger the biggest policy row of Mr Miliband’s leadership, when Labour gathers in Milton Keynes.

More than 50 local Labour parties, plus all the main unions, are expected to stage a revolt against this cop-out. What they want is for each franchise to be taken back as it comes up for renewal – at no cost to the taxpayer, therefore – over a period of up to six years.

Trains would be run by Directly Operated Railways (DOR), the not-for-profit, stateowned firm which has successfully run East Coast services for nearly five years, after that franchise collapsed.

The key point about the “compromise”

is that it appears set up to ensure private firms keep winning the franchise contests, with seven up for grabs in the next Parliament.

It costs up to £10 million to bid. Is it really likely that a public bidder, amid huge spending cuts, would be allowed to risk losing all that taxpayers’ cash?

As the transport secretary pointed out, who will choose the winner? The government, when one bidder is, in effect, the government?

Also, what is to stop private firms putting in laughable bids to grab the lucrative prize, only to later “hand back the keys”

– as National Express and GNER did on the East Coast?

Furthermore, DOR may not even exist after the election, if the East Coast re-privatisation goes ahead next February, as planned – so there would be no state-run bidder in the hat.

Finally, the franchising system is completely discredited, after blundering civil servants forced the abandonment of the West Coast contest.

A defeat this weekend will pile pressure on the leadership to think again, so come on the rebels.

Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs in the North-East don’t agree about much, but are united over Darlington hairdressers. Town MP Jenny Chapman said colleges are churning out too many beauticians. Redcar Lib Dem Ian Swales added: “I don’t know a lot about Darlington, but does it really need 100 hairdressers a year?”